Fwd: Octave?

[Matthew Miller]

On Fri, Mar 18, 2005 at 09:11:16PM -0500, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On Fri, 18 Mar 2005 17:42:54 -0500, Matthew Miller <mattdm at mattdm.org> wrote:
> Achieving that without ending up with FC-mumble coming out without an
> x (insert package in extras) that will work on it being available for
> weeks will be quite an accomplishment. Without this level of assurance

Um, I think I need either some more punctuation in the above sentence or
some more coffee -- Huh? :)

> we're asking users that depend on 'extras' packages to undertake a
> difficult additional step of comparing the packages they use against
> the available extras prior to upgrading (since compatibility is broken
> from time to time).

Packages have always been dropped from the distro. Moving them to extras
instead of dropping them seems like a huge win here.


> As far as installing ease, unless you mean that extras will be
> available as an additional DVD image, and the installer prompts the
> user for additional disks so they can be added to the package
> selection (and the bloat-me-harder everything install) then we will
> have not achieved the same ease as packages in the base install.

Yes, I think this is a goal.

> If extras do indeed turn out to be so well maintained and easy to
> install that my concerns turn out warrentless, then we really should
> be moving the bulk of the distribution into extras.

And yes, I'd like to see this too. "Core" should be just that.

-- 
Matthew Miller           mattdm at mattdm.org        <http://www.mattdm.org/>
Boston University Linux      ------>                <http://linux.bu.edu/>